Kiss axeman slams singer as 'sex addict'

9:36 AM Tuesday Nov 1, 2011

Gene Simmons has been branded a "sex addict" by his former bandmate.

The Kiss rocker - who married longterm girlfriend Shannon Tweed earlier this month - only had sex "once or twice a year" in the early days of the band but slept with "hundreds" of women as he became more successful, Ace Frehley has claimed.

Ace - who gave up drinking alcohol in 2006 - wrote in his new book No Regrets: A Rock 'n' Roll Memoir: "I believe Gene is a sex addict, in much the same way I am an alcoholic. If you've been with only one or two women (and had to beg for whatever you got off them), it must be intoxicating to suddenly have groupies falling all over you.

"You go from getting laid once or twice a year to getting laid a hundred times by a hundred different women."

Ace - who performed with Kiss from 1973 to 1982 then rejoined in 1996 for six years - believes Gene's promiscuity had a "negative" effect on the band and says the rocker was not selective about who he got intimate with.

He added: "We all have our issues and vices, and I saw Gene's behaviour affect him and the band sometimes in a negative way ... He would (sleep with) almost anything. Short, tall, plump, svelte, attractive, merely tolerable."